Friday 27
Tonight I leave for Calcutta. I was last in New York at the end of April so it has been around one month. In that time, Mira has finished shooting all of the New York scenes and now comes to Calcutta to shoot all the India scenes. This is the final two weeks of shooting and then the film is done!
I arrive into the Calcutta airport at 12.30AM, and am surprised how small and old the international terminal is. It looks a lot like the old Don Muang Airport when I was a child. Anyway, I catch a cab to the hotel and so my first view of India is from the window of a taxi, rushing through the night time streets. Calcutta is old. It is what people think of when they think of India, people sleeping on the sidewalk and cows walking in the street. But there is also a lot of history here. You can feel the history, the sense of a lot of time passing through these places. As I majored in history in college, this is a feeling that excites me. I get to the hotel, check in, and finally get to sleep around 3AM.
Saturday 28
My first day on the set is a shock. Calcutta has 12 million people and they all seem to be gathered on the street watching the film shoot. Indians love movies. Bollywood is the largest producer of movies in the world and so movies are an important part of popular culture here. The city is hot and crowded and noisy and it takes a long time for my car to get through all the people and drop me in front of the set at 8AM.
I go upstairs and say hello to all the crew members and Mira. I learn that about half of the crew members are sick from eating bad food or drinking bad water. Even Mira is sick, but as usual, she is full of energy. They are in the middle of directing a scene with all of the Indian family members.
The house they are in is very beautiful and Fred Elmes’ lighting is gorgeous as usual. I also meet Sooni Taraporevela, the writer of the script and the woman who has written almost all of Mira’s scripts since Salaam Bombay!. I think it must be difficult for her to see someone else direct something she has written because certainly every writer sees the images their own way. I ask her if she has ever thought of directing and she says no. I ask why and she says because she doesn’t think she can handle the pressure – she doesn’t have the personality. I agree with her – for the year that I have known Mira, I see why she is successful as a professional filmmaker. It’s not only because of her talent and intelligence but also because of her personality. She is like a lion. She is very strong, very charismatic, and she never gets tired. Like today, even when she is sick, she still smiles and chats with me between takes. She has the personality of a leader, which is what you need to have as a director.
The shoot finishes at around 9PM and I take a taxi back to the hotel with the film’s star Kal Penn. We have a nice chat and he tells me how excited he is to be working with Mira. He says, in Hollywood, there are so few serious dramatic roles for Indian actors and he feels lucky to be able to work on The Namesake.
Sunday 29
Today is a crazy day and maybe the most difficult day of the entire movie. We are shooting inside Howrah train station which is the busiest train station in India. It is like Hualumpong but three times bigger and with ten times more people. Everyday, 1.5 million people pass through this train station.
We are shooting a scene where the Ganguli family runs through the station to board a train. There is security everywhere because of Tabu, the main actress, who is very famous in India. There must be over a thousand people who are in the station trying to get a look at her, including the paparazzi from the newspapers. The production shoots in the middle of the train station and police need to be deployed to hold back the crowds with shotguns and rifles and wooden sticks. I ask the policemen why they need guns and they say without guns, the crowds will just come in and start stealing the equipment.
The scene we shoot in the daytime is very complicated. The family is running through the station trying to catch their train, surrounded by a large crowd. So there are about 50 extras surrounding the actors. I even get to be an extra in the scene, playing a tourist with a camera around my neck. The camera is on a Steadicam in front of the four main actors and the extras are behind them to block out the crowd of onlookers who are not in the scene. In fact, you wouldn’t be able to shoot this scene without the extras to block the crowds from looking in the camera. Mira shoots this shot seven times, not because the actors are bad (they don’t need to do much) but because the choreography of the extras moving past them isn’t good. That’s the important part about background extras. When they’re good, you don’t notice them, but when they’re moving incorrectly, it can take you out of the scene.
While this is happening, the paparazzi almost get into a fistfight with security and the manager of the station gets into a large argument with the producer. But Mira continues to work. In a way, the producer is there to ensure that the production problems don’t reach Mira, so she can concentrate on the creative side only. In the afternoon, the crew gets on the train to shoot a long dialogue scene on the moving train. But because there is so little room, I decide not to go and get in the way. Instead, I take a train with the Rolex photographers out to the countryside around Calcutta to see what it is like. And it looks just like Thailand. I shot some of my short films in Esan, and the Indian countryside looks the same as Roi-Et.
Monday 30
Today is a holiday and I spend the afternoon interviewing with the Rolex documentary crew. They ask me many things, but the question that sticks in my mind the most is “what is the most important thing you have learned from this experience?” I have learned the answer ever since the first day of shooting in New York. I have learned that what Mira does and what I do is the same thing. I used to think that the famous film directors did things differently, that they had some secret methods that made their films so interesting. Being with Mira for the shooting of The Namesake has shown me that her work is no different from mine. She needs to fight for every shot, nothing comes easy, there is never enough time, and the footage doesn’t always turn out the way you want it to. But you keep fighting to try to get as close as possible to the idea you have in your head. That’s what a film director does, from making a 5-minute short film to a 5-hour epic. Seeing this has given me confidence that I can do what she does. Throughout the time I have been with her I have learned many things, but this lesson is the one that is the most important to me.
Tuesday 31
Today we shoot on the streets of Calcutta and as usual it is hot and there seem to be a thousand people standing in the streets watching us. Birds shit on all the crew members and the equipment because we are shooting under some trees.
The scene we are shooting has Ashima and her two teenage children taking a street tour of Calcutta, being pulled by a rickshaw. The camera is on a steadicam in front of them. Because we are shooting at noon, the sunlight is very strong so Fred puts up a 12ft x 12ft frame with diffusion to cut the sunlight. So as the rickshaw with the actors are being pulled along the street, four other crew members have to run along with the rickshaw holding up this big frame above the actors. This is one of the situations that DPs hate the most – shooting in noon sunlight. It is hard to make the light look nice because the contrast is too strong.
After lunch, we move to shoot the actors sitting inside a bus moving in the street. This scene takes a long time to set up because we are working inside a real bus with actors and extras and the camera and sound people. It is about 100 degrees and everybody is under pressure and in a bad mood. The bus is parked in a main street and all around us cars are honking their horns because of the traffic jam that is created. Everybody is angry because they have closed off half the street for shooting. The cars are also blocked by the thousand people who are watching the shoot, standing in the street. The police need to keep them away from the bus with big sticks.
I notice that weather makes a big difference in whether a film shoot is enjoyable or not. When it is too hot or too cold the crew members start to get angry easily. Working on a film is just the same as working in any other job. You want the job environment to be as pleasant as possible. That’s why it is always easiest to shoot indoors where the temperature is normal. The crew is always happiest that way!
Wednesday 1 June
Today is my last day in Calcutta and we are shooting again in the same house we shot last weekend. The scene is a celebration of Ashima and Ashoke after their wedding in 1977 before they move to America to start their family. So on my final day on the shoot, we move back to the beginning to shoot the first scene in the film. It is a nice end to my first trip to India and also for my experience on The Namesake. In the scene there are flowers and golden silks everywhere. All the actors are dressed in golden silk costumes as is the custom for Indian weddings. There seems to be a big celebration for my last day on the shoot. Of course it is all fake – this wedding is not real, the people are all just actors, it is just a normal Wednesday in the rest of the world. But being here now, the celebration seems to be real – that’s the way it is with movies, every now and again when the sets are well done, the actors are good, and the extras are well cast, for a minute you forget that it is just a movie – it almost seems like real life. So here, now, it seems a real celebration for my last day. I say goodbye to all the crew members. I will see Mira again soon but some of the crew members I know I will never see again. It is always sad to leave a film set. Throughout the shoot, we become like a family and it is quite sad to say goodbye to this family.
As I walk away from the set, I turn around and watch everyone go back to work, setting up the next shot. Though I am leaving today, there are still 5 more days of shooting until the film is complete. I will wait for the day when I can see The Namesake in the movie theaters. Then this experience will truly be complete.
Aditya Assarat